UNKL Brand Interview

Recently I had the pleasure of being able to pick the brain of another design industry giant, whose company goes by the name of UNKL Brand. Their most recent and very successful contest was the Unipo-By-You, which I regrettably did not send my ideas for.. Of the founders Jason Bacon and Derek Welch, I was only able to track down Derek as his partner was busy at the time, but I am sure after all of these years they are probably pretty much on the same page for the most part with their company. I hope you will enjoy reading this interview as much as I did creating it

I’d like to start off by thanking you for taking the time out of what is probably a very busy schedule to answer these questions.

Can you tell me a little about yourselves and how you started in the design field?

Derek: Yes, things are busy, but I’m happy to take the time to share some of what we do. Thanks for the opportunity to do so. Now, how I got started…I went to college in Texas to be a “commercial artist”. At the time I didn’t really know what it meant. I just knew I wanted to create art and get a paycheck at the same time. I focused on illustration until I took a design class and the rest fell into place. After graduating I worked in Austin and Dallas for 3 years before moving to Oregon to work for Nike. I was there almost 6 years until JB and I started Big-Giant. I’ve been hooked on design for over 15 years now.

Do you have a long history of working together or was UNKL the first thing that you collaborated on?

Derek: Jason and I met while working for Nike in the Brand Design department. We used to kick projects back and forth between us just to see what the other would come up with. We also would write stories with characters and illustrate them for fun. The collaborations allowed us to expand our creative reach by leveraging each others talent. We’re a great team, because we have different approaches. We push each others ideas beyond what each of us would create individually.